Who isn’t getting into original programming these days? The proliferation of new shows is staggering, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for good ones. EPIX president and CEO Mark Greenberg says that when he wrote a business plan for the premium cable network nine years ago, the intention was to always have original series as a critical part of the programming mix.

While currently airing the EPIX original “America Divided,” a five-part series examining inequality in our nation, tonight, the network premieres its first two scripted series — “Graves,” a political satire starring Nick Nolte and Sela Ward, and “Berlin Station,” a spy thriller starring Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans, Richard Jenkins and Michelle Forbes.

‘Graves’

What: A political comedy starring Nick Nolte and Sela Ward.

When: Premieres 10 tonight.

Nick Nolte plays former Republican President Richard Graves, who learns Slate magazine has called him “the worst president in history” while riding in a car with former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani.

Real politicos and media celebs populate the satire to give it an air of reality, but in today’s campaign atmosphere, it may seem almost too real. The show’s creator, Joshua Michael Stern, calls Graves a composite of Ronald Reagan and “LBJ in the sense that he sort of was a strong-arm southwestern President.”

Once the most powerful man in the world, Graves’ life has been reduced being trotted out for fundraisers and worrying about his legacy. Meanwhile his wife, Margaret (Sela Ward), is contemplating a Senate run of her own, and his daughter, Olivia (Helene York) has just found out her husband has cheated on her.

The Slate’s article has gotten under Graves’ skin, though, and he begins researching himself on the internet to reassess his life and finds historians think he was pretty bad as a chief executive. After a chance encounter with a waitress named Samantha (Callie Hernandez), he gets stoned with her and starts thinking what to do.

Inspired, Graves decides to go on a quixotic journey to right all the wrongs he and his administration had done.

Nolte says he could identify with character. “You know, you’ve gotta look at your own life and say, ‘How old are you, and do you have any regrets or not?’ ” says the actor. “I’m 75. I got a lot of regrets. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s president or not president or Republican or Democrat. It’s a man that is aching.”

When it’s jokingly suggested that his next series should be “Nick Nolte’s Regrets,” the actor quips back, “I’ll buy that any day.”

Though Stern cites Reagan as an inspiration for the character, Nolte says he didn’t use him as a model when working on Graves.

“I didn’t think Reagan was a good president. He was a bad actor,” he says. “I didn’t get this great orator, you know. He was a bad speechmaker.”

Stern says when he was writing the series, he would channel Nolte’s gravelly voice, “Because I thought this unfiltered, irreverent, drinking, smoking character could almost only be portrayed by Nick.”

‘Berlin Station’

“Berlin Station,” which begins airing Sunday, is 46-year-old American novelist Olen Steinhauer’s first foray into TV, and the subject is as much in the today’s headlines as you can get. It follows the agents at an American CIA office in the German city on a mission to find an infamous internet whistleblower who has gone underground.

Steinhauer says his first inspiration for the series came on a visit to Berlin a few years ago when he saw stickers around that said, “ein bett für Snowden,” which translates to “a bed for Snowden,” referring to giving sanctuary to the American fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“There was such a big movement going on — and it is still going on now to some degree — to protect whistleblowers that it seemed like a natural plot to start working on,” says the novelist.

Steinhauer stresses that, unlike what you tend to see in some TV shows and movies, teams of people do most intelligence work.

“Intelligence is networking. Intelligence is multiple people working together. It was a group of people who found bin Laden,” Steinhauer says. “The series is supposed to show how normal people with an abnormal job deal with that and how they have to work together. There are no superheroes in this.”

“I don’t understand how you live your life as a spy and then live your own life,” says Emmy-winner Jenkins. “We met a couple of CIA people who are just these folks who have jobs that happen to be CIA agents, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a fascinating predicament to be in.”

Armitage (“The Hobbit”), who often plays action characters, describes the series as something of an “intellectual game” where spies can’t rely on their old ways of doing things any more and must “face their opponents as human beings.”

It was important for Steinhauer that the series be shot entirely in Berlin.

“The city is a character,” he says. “This story can only happen in Berlin. We were insistent on keeping things real. We want Berliners to be able to watch this show and say, ‘Oh, I know this place.’ ”

‘America Divided’

What: A docu-series about the inequities in the U.S.

When: 9 p.m. Fridays.

For Solly Granatstein, the genesis for his docu-series “America Divided” began when he was working on “Years of Living Dangerously,” the Showtime series about climate change that is moving to Nat Geo.

“We felt it was a formula that really worked just in getting people’s attention,” he said.

“America Divided,” which has already started airing, emphasizes some domestic issues that also happen to be big in the current presidential campaign — inequalities in education, housing, health care, labor, criminal justice and the political system.

In one episode, Oscar-winning hip-hop artist Common returned to his hometown of Chicago to examine disparities in the criminal justice system. Actress Rosario Dawson visited Flint, Mich., to investigate the man-made disaster behind the city’s water crisis. Legendary TV producer Norman Lear investigates gentrification and displacement in New York City by going undercover to expose racial discrimination in housing.

Granatstein — who has worked on the news at ABC, CBS and NBC — felt that having celebrity correspondents “was a formula that really worked just in getting people’s attention.” The producer sought stars who had some connection to what they were covering, like Ferrara, whose parents migrated from Honduras, and immigration.

“You’re going to attract audiences who you might not otherwise attract to news content. I think it mixes it up a little bit, allows you to get more subjective,” Granatstein says.

For Lear, who turned 94 this summer, he says he learned something about being a journalist while doing “America Divided.”

“I think a reporter is probably not doing his or her best if that person isn’t highly interested. I was extremely interested in what we were dealing with,” he says. “So it’s no surprise to me that my interest showed, and I think that’s what people react to.”

Rob Lowman began at the L.A. Daily News working in editing positions on the news side, including working on Page 1 the day the L.A. Riots began in 1992. In 1993, he made the move to features, and in 1995 became the Entertainment Editor for 15 years. He returned to writing full time in 2010. Throughout his career he has interviewed a wide range of celebrities in the arts. The list includes the likes of Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood to Kristin Stewart and Emma Stone in Hollywood; classical figures like Yo Yo Ma and Gustavo Dudamel to pop stars like Norah Jones, Milly Cyrus and Madonna; and authors such as Joseph Heller, John Irving and Lee Child. Rob has covered theater, dance and the fine arts as well as reviewing film, TV and stage. He has also covered award shows and written news stories related to the entertainment business. A longtime resident of Santa Clarita, Rob is still working on his first more-than-30-year marriage, has three grown children (all with master's degrees) and five guitars.

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